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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
General Atomics announces breeding blanket test facility
General Atomics announced it is developing design concepts in collaboration with the Department of Energy for the Fusion Blanket Component Test Facility (BCTF), which will test full-scale breeding blankets.
“No one has tested a fusion blanket at this scale. While there are more research and development challenges ahead, a BCTF brings us closer to turning fusion from proven science into practical, sustainable power,” said Anantha Krishnan, senior vice president of the General Atomics Energy Group.
B. K. Shukla
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 65 | Number 1 | January 2014 | Pages 145-153
Lecture | doi.org/10.13182/FST13-647
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The 82.6 GHz/200 kW and 42 GHz/500 kW electron cyclotron resonance heating (ECRH) systems will be used in Tokamak SST-1 to carry out preionization and start-up experiments at 3.0- and 1.5-T operation. The 82.6-GHz gyrotron system has been tested for continuous waves (1000-s duration) using a conventional high-voltage power supply and for pulsed operation (200 kW for 1 s) using a regulated high-voltage power supply. The 42-GHz ECRH system is a pulsed system (500 ms), which will be used to carry out preionization and start-up experiments at 1.5 T (fundamental harmonic) on SST-1 and at 0.75 T (second harmonic) on Tokamak Aditya. The circular corrugated waveguide-based transmission line system contains two waveguide switches: one to test the gyrotron on a dummy load or the tokamak and the second switch to launch the ECRH power, either in SST-1 or in Aditya. The 42-GHz system has been tested on a dummy load, and the gyrotron delivers 500-kW power at beam voltage ∼49 kV and beam current ∼18 A. The output of the gyrotron is Gaussian (TEM00 mode) with mode purity >99%. The system is commissioned on both tokamaks (SST-1 and Aditya) to launch power in any tokamak.